So that leads me into spiritual gifts.
You do see a couple of them working here today, right at the
worship and Carrie and and our sister here and Kevin, I mean
the body of Christ coming together and using their passion
and their hearts for the things that are Lord.
And how awesome is that, right? So I wanted to talk this morning
about the church and how God sees it and how he designed it
and the purpose of why he created a church in general and
the initial purpose of of the Lord's heart for the world.
We can see in the book of Matthew chapter 28, where he
says to the disciples and those following him before he
ascended, it says, and Jesus came and spoke to them, saying,
all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you.
And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Amen. So that's what we do here every
week. We we teach you the things that
God desires you to know so you know how to follow him.
You know how to keep your life on track with him so you can be
blessed by him and enjoy your relationship with God on a daily
basis because of your knowledge and understanding of the word of
God. Living the word of God,
meditating on it, receiving it, listening to it, hearing it and
applying it to your lives daily. That's the job of the the pastor
teacher to feed the sheep. Jesus said if you love me you
feed my sheep. And I know any man that teaches
in the church as well as the women that teach the women our
hearts desire is not to give an impressive message or whatever a
motivational speech, but to give you the truth of God's word.
So it goes into your art, your hearts and begins to change your
thinking and change your lives. And it happens, doesn't it?
Week in and week out, our lives are being changed little by
little. Our hearts become softer.
We learn to love God and we learn to to love each other.
We learn to be patient with each other.
As Cindy and I were talking about something recently, you
know, we have conflict at times in our marriage.
We all do, but we love each other.
We've been together 54 years and we just never gave up on each
other. It's easy to quit and to say I'm
moving on or whatever, but in church relationships, we work,
we endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace
because we, we love one another and none of us are perfect, but
God is perfecting us. But also, the first thing you do
after you become a new believer in Jesus is to get baptized.
So if you haven't been baptized yet, on September 20th, water
temperature will be about 85° and no worries, we're going to
baptize. OK, So let me know, Pastor
Lewis, if you want to get baptized at our house at 10:00
on Saturday, September 20th, that'll be the last baptism for
this year unless we go to the YMCA.
So take advantage of it. Some people are calling us and
saying, you know, I never been baptized.
I really need to get baptized. And that's something God will
bless you for. Doesn't save you, but it will
make you go deeper in the Lord because you're being obedient to
what it is he told you to do. OK and and then also what it
says in that little gospel message, Aaron Matthew, is he
going to all the world? So I know it's hard to have a
conversation sometimes with people about your faith.
And maybe you're nervous or you don't know how to do it.
And you, you learn as you come here how to share your faith.
But this is a real simple thing. You're standing in a
supermarket, you're bored, you're impatient, and you see
someone in front of you and you strike up a conversation and
they they're sharing their life with you or whatever.
They're just talking about whatever they're going through.
You have an opportunity to say, hey, you know, I go to this
church called Calvary Chapel. They have a radio station.
You can listen to it and hear good news.
Everybody needs to hear good news.
And there's AQR code. You can find out more about it
and see messages and all that kind of stuff.
I like to invite you sometime. It's real simple.
So I have a pile of them on my shirt.
So if I'm driving through Starbucks, hey, here's 1 here
and you're going through Chick-fil-A, here's 1 here.
Do me a favour, do the Lord a favour, bless him by taking some
of these and passing them out and inviting people.
And if we do that, one of these days, this place won't have
enough room to fill the people. And that's what God wants.
He wants to fill his church with people that desire to know him
and to follow him. So this is a great little tool.
OK, I don't know about how many times you've been around and
said, boy, I wish I had something to give, something to
tell them about the church, where it's at, what time it is.
I can't remember all that stuff. You know, I'm the pastor.
I don't even know what time at the time.
But anyway, you are invited to Calvary Chapel.
So grab some of those, maybe take 3 this week and pray and
say, Lord, give me 3 like arrangements or providential
meetings of people you want me to give these to.
And I guarantee the Lord will give you an opportunity to give
them out. OK, so let's pray.
Father God, we thank you today for your word.
We thank you for the privilege we have to be together here.
And Lord, we pray for the people that are listening live on Grace
FM even now, people who are tuned into YouTube.
Lord, we pray you would bless all of them and bring fruit from
your teaching today and the lives of your people and your
church. And we pray all these things in
Jesus name, Amen. So we are in First Corinthians
chapter 12 continuing where I had left off several weeks ago
before we were away on vacation at the beach.
And the first first chapter 12 verse one, it says Now
concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to
be ignorant. So this is a heads up from the
Lord. He doesn't want us to be
unknowing about spiritual gifting.
This is very important and you may or may not know what your
spiritual gifts are. Every one of you have at least
one. Some of you may have more than
one, and the only way you can really get to know what your
spiritual gifts are is to begin to dip your feet in the water to
find out maybe where you fit in the body of the church, what
type of ministries that are available, things you can get
involved in. Laurie and Paul are away this
weekend on their vacation and no drummer today.
So all we need is a drummer for people who only have a beat.
You remember who sang that flying the family stones you got
you win. I'll give you one of these cards
when you leave here. You get a prize.
But anyway, if you know how to play drums and I mean if you
know how to play drums, let let our worship leader Gina know So
when Paul is in here, you can fill in.
OK, there's other worship opportunities, there's sound
room opportunities, there's opportunities in kids ministry,
and there's opportunities and things that we don't even know
yet or even thought about yet. You might have an idea of a new
ministry you believe the Lord wants you to start.
And there's no bureaucracy here, no hoops to be jumping through,
no groups of people. You got to sit down and get
judged by you to say, hey, I want to do this.
I have a heart to do this. We have a sister here that's
helping us with social media right now and she's very excited
about raise your raise your hand Brenda back there.
And she's a newer believer and she came out of the Catholic
Church and she's finding something special here in her
life because of the word of God. And she, she's getting getting
used to getting used to our worship, though our worship's
different than a Catholic Church because like we go on and on.
So she comes in a little late, but that's OK.
You know, she catches part of it.
But she's her and Kevin and others are working with the
social media now to let people know that's another way of
evangelism. So if you, if you know how to do
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube X all these things I don't know
anything about ask Brenda or tell her you want to get
involved in helping get the word out about Calvary Chapel.
That would be awesome. But spiritual gifts are
something that you have to have faith to ask the Lord to show
you what he created you for and why he made you a son or a
daughter of his. Not to just sit and listen to
messages week in and week out. I mean, that's important to hear
the word, but how can you get mobilized and actively involved
in the preordained calling of God upon your life?
And this church believes in giving people the opportunity to
use their gifting. Years ago, I had to do Sunday
morning and we did Sunday nights and we did Wednesday nights.
And every time there was a teaching, I had to be the one to
do it. And I I don't want to be the one
that has to do it all the time because that's not sustainable.
God created men and women with spiritual gifts to serve in the
ministry to use their teaching abilities.
And Wednesday nights we have 5 different men that are gifted to
teach through the Old Testament. What a blessing.
We have women Bible studies. We have a men Bible study on
Tuesday night. On Tuesday mornings we have
women's studies over here. Sunday morning.
We have all these gatherings and opportunities.
A Bible study at a Home group that started last Friday night
at the Fred and Mary Ellen's home.
It's just so exciting for me to see after all these years of
ministry, the body of Christ actually working and and Deb, I,
I heard amazing things about what the Lord did at that
women's retreat. Cindy said you had like notes
all over the table and he's like, are we going to have to
listen to all these pages and you only read a couple things
she said, but it came from her heart, the flow of the Holy
Spirit through your life to give whatever the Lord wanted to
give, give to those women and they were truly blessed.
I know my wife was for sure, and so take advantage of these
things. This men's retreat coming up in
a couple weeks, that is going to be an awesome, awesome time out
in Ligonier. I don't stay overnight.
So guys, sometimes you don't want to stay overnight.
I drive up Friday evening, listen, go home, sleep at home,
get up Saturday morning, come back and then leave Saturday
afternoon when it's over. So please pray about attending
that because if you go, it'll change your life.
The guy that's teaching this year is a friend of mine from
Colorado, Ed Taylor. He teaches on our station.
I talked to him on the phone periodically.
He has a radio station like ours, Grace FM, wonderful Bible
teacher, came out of cocaine addiction, came out of running
around on his wife, came out of all kinds of stuff.
And the Lord got a hold of his life and saved him.
So you've got a tremendous, tremendous testimony to share
with us. So how Jesus changed his life.
But you might be here today. OK, spiritual gifts.
What's this have to do with me? It has everything to do with
you. And the Lord doesn't want you to
not be aware of the fact that you have something special He's
given you to serve the Lord. But if you don't test the water,
if you don't step out by faith, even though you might not be
sure that's where you're being called to, you'll never know.
But if you step out by faith and you find what it is God's gifted
you for, you'll never turn back again.
You love what it is he's told you to do.
And it's not a burden, it's a joy.
It's no pressure. It comes naturally.
And so there's, there's no expectations of me or Lewis or
anybody else in the church in regard to what you do or what
you don't do. Just the fact that you show up
on a Sunday, that's the gift of helps.
You're helping me be encouraged today by you just being here,
wanting to hear God's word. When you're able to give, that's
another gift of of helps and gift of giving.
That's part of what makes all this work on a week in and week
out, the daily basis here at Calvary Chapel.
So he doesn't want us to be ignorant.
And down in verse four, he says there's diversities of gifts.
I covered this the last time I was reviewing a little bit, but
the same Spirit. So there's all these different
kind of gifts that we're going to talk about here in a moment,
but it's the one Holy Spirit that gives these gifts.
I don't give him. Lewis doesn't.
No man gives them. This is from God, the Holy
Spirit. There's differences of
ministries and I could go on and on about all the various things
that happened here. You're, you're aware of them
through the constant contact and the announcements of all the
things that you can get involved in.
But it's the same Lord. There's diversities of
activities, all kind of different things going on.
You can't be involved in everything, but you can't be
involved in some things that you have a heart and a passion for.
I know Operation Christmas Child is going to come up pretty soon
and Kerry's very passionate about that.
I'm so thankful that she spearheads that because that's
her gift and the passion and Michael, but others have that
same gift and they get on board with her to help her.
And that's a form of missions around the world with Franklin
Graham's organization. And we we had a ton of little
boxes that went out last year because of that.
But even though there's all these different activities, it
says it's the same God who works All in all.
So this is all by God's grace. These things occur verse 7.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for
the profit of all. That's where I want to hang out
for a little bit. The gift that you are given
isn't to elevate you or to make you feel important or more
special than maybe someone else. That's that's Father's removed
point of why we got these spiritual gifts.
It's given to each one of us to profit other people.
So whatever your gift is, when you serve in it, it's blessing
other people. I think of John and Kelly and
they go to the to the nursing home ministry several times a
month. That's obviously a gift of
theirs of they wouldn't be doing it, a passion to reach these
older people. I know some people in the church
have joined up with them to go with them when they're able to.
That's something that is endless because those people in the
nursing homes usually have no one seeing them or caring about
them, not even family seeing them.
And when they bring their little dog in with them and they bring
the, the worship and the word in it, it changes their lives.
It brightens them up, doesn't it?
John and Kelly and the women's breakfast that Kelly has once a
month. She does that not to show off
their beautiful home, which is beautiful.
She does it to show off her beautiful Savior Jesus, who she
who she loves and she wants to share that with you women.
So all these opportunities to get engaged and develop
friendships and to and to get to know the Lord deeper and to get
to know one another deeper as well.
It says for the one is given the word of wisdom through the
Spirit to another, the word of knowledge through the same
spirit. It's taken me a lot of years as
a Christian to move away from what is called Cares mania, not
Karismata, which is the real empowering and outpouring of
spiritual gifts, which is biblical and supernatural, but
presumption and deception and false teaching in regard to
spiritual gifts. And the word of wisdom and the
word of knowledge isn't something that has to be
trumpeted. That what I'm going to say right
now, I believe is a word of wisdom from God or a word of
knowledge from God. Pastor Chuck used to say be
supernatural. Naturally, you don't have to act
like some TV evangelist roaming around the stage pushing people
over and slaying people in the Spirit to think that God's alive
or is real when the over the Holy Spirit's moving through his
Spirit who dwells in us through the Word of God in the midst of
a group of people. You don't have to advertise
that. It's a phenomena that any guy
can do. And many times when these
giftings are working in US, we're not even aware of it
unless someone comes up and says, and I'll hear this once in
a while when people leave, did my wife call you or did you read
my mail? Or like, I'm like, what are you
talking about? And it's like, you were talking
to me in there and I'm thinking like, I don't even really know
who you are. What do you mean?
I was talking to you. I heard God speak to me through
what you were saying. Well, praise God.
That's like what we're praying will happen, but we're we're
clueless of that. We're just going through the
Bible simply verse by verse. And God is using it in your life
specifically in a way that I'm, I'm not even aware of, right?
I just want to do what he tells me to do and be faithful to
cover the, the text and the information and, and the rest is
up between you and the Lord, what he's going to do with that
with you. But the word of wisdom is when
someone comes to you and you're talking with them about
something and, and it's complicated and they don't know
what to do and you really don't know what to recommend either,
but you're waiting on the Lord. Maybe you're praying as you're
talking to them, and then all of a sudden the Lord says something
in your conscience, your heart, your mind that you communicate
to them, and all of a sudden their countenance changes and
the smile comes on their face. Why didn't I think of that?
That's amazing. That's how that should be
handled. That's God's wisdom being poured
out through US periodically, the word of knowledge.
That's really amazing because God is giving you a sensitivity
about something in someone's life that you're just made aware
of. You have no evidence of the
problem or the sin or the issue whatever, or the struggle or the
heartache that that person's going through.
But perhaps you just say, you know, the Lord's laid you on my
heart and I wanted to share this with you.
I don't know if this is from Him or not, but I believe such and
such is happening in your life. And all the sudden they look at
you and they think, how in the world did you know that?
What's the Lord, His knowledge? It's imparted to you at times to
say things, and you can't command these things to happen.
You can't make them happen. It's according to how He wants
it to happen, how the Holy Spirit does these things.
He gives these things out severally as He wills through
the same Spirit to another faith.
Faith. How much faith you need to get
by every day? How much faith you need to
believe God for impossible situations?
How much faith do you need when the diagnosis isn't good or the
marriage is beginning to fall apart or the children are going
awayward or making wrong decisions?
How much faith do you need to overcome and to be able to walk
on the waves and not sink because of the waves?
That's a special impartation of God to to believe God in
impossible situations and still be able to be OK.
He tells us without faith it's impossible to please him, for
those who come to God must first believe that he is and that he's
a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
The man in the Gospels said to the Lord when he was challenged
with a very difficult situation, he said, Lord, I believe helped
by unbelief. And we all have times of
unbelief. Even even though we know God's
completely faithful, we need to have him empower us with this
kind of faith that isn't human. It's it's supernatural.
How can you trust God when everything seems to be falling
apart? That's the gift of faith.
Faith is believing God for things in ministry too.
Cindy and I-30 years ago had a heart and a vision to plant a
Calvary Chapel in Greensburg. We had no real experience.
Little did we know what we were getting into at the time.
If we knew way back then what we would have to go through or
experience, I would have said no thanks, Lord.
That's why it's good that the Lord doesn't show you everything
in advance, but He gave us enough faith to believe Him to.
For a church plant, I'm very modest little humble place at
the YWCA. We would sit, sit up and take
down for 12 years, people coming, people going back and
forth, all that kind of stuff. And, and man, I'll tell you, you
know it, it does never seem like it would develop or work out or
whatever. And the day he's made this this
place with you wonderful people with a full power radio station
with a wonderful facility that we never dreamed would be
possible. But more importantly bringing
gifted people and raising them up in the ministry to serve the
Lord here. This not my ministry.
It's his ministry and it's your ministry as you serve him in
this ministry to another gifts of healing.
Now, in the Apostolic days, the apostles had supernatural
capabilities that no one else has ever had since they've left
the earth. Apostolic anointing and giftings
to bring miraculous healings and to raise people from the dead.
And you read in the book of the Acts the things that were
accomplished to the hands of Peter and Paul and others.
Healings are something that we all want to see manifest in our
lives whenever we're diagnosed with a serious illness or
disease or tragedy or accident, whatever.
And we would love just to be able to go into a hospital room
and lay hands on someone and see them instantaneously healed and
raised up where they don't need the medicine anymore.
They don't need the doctors anymore and occasions that still
help. That still happens on occasions,
but the degree of it happening is, let's say less manifest as
it was in the book of the Acts. But nonetheless it still occurs.
And anybody that would say that they have the gift of healing
would really be presumptuous. The people on TV, whether it's
Benny Hinn and these kind of people, I mean, they, they've
made multi millions of dollars taking the word of God out of
context and making people believe that if they gave an
offer, if they did this an offer, if they had enough faith
that they would have these miraculous healings, their sight
would be restored or paralysis would be taken away and they'd
be able to walk again on and on and on.
And so people look at these things on TV and they get their
hopes up and they're desperate and they'll go from one church
to the next church to the next preacher to the next preacher
and trying to find Jesus somewhere that can do a miracle
for them through a human being. But that isn't what was taught
in the Gospels. None of these things I'm talking
about Jesus didn't specifically cover these things in any of the
Gospels. These became Apostolic teachings
of Paul and Peter and James and John began to discuss in the
early inceptions of the church, but they gave us another
methodology for healing and that's in James chapter 5.
It's not to get all the people all hyped up through worship and
have have me or Lewis or someone come up.
I I sense God wants to heal someone today of diabetes.
Come on up here. I, the Lord put it on my heart
and I believe it, you know, on and on and on.
Instead of people come up with the diabetes or whatever and,
and, and everything's going on and, and, and you're, you're
healed in Jesus name. And then they're, everybody's
excited and they go home and they go to the doctor the next
week to get the, the blood tests and, and what's up?
Well, are you taking your insulin?
Well, no, I stopped taking my insulin and I'm healed.
Well, according to your blood tests, you, you have sugar
diabetes. And if you don't take your
medicine, you're going to die. The presumption has to be
justified by a medical doctor that can give the clarification
that there's been something that's occurred, it's
miraculous. And you no longer have the
cancer. I don't understand it.
You no longer have the clogged artery.
I don't understand it. But you don't need the medicine.
And then you tell them, well, I was praying the Lord would heal
me and maybe he healed you just through your own prayers and
your own desperation before the Lord.
Maybe your husband laid hands on you and really prayed and or the
wife laid hands on the husband or the children or whatever.
And it has nothing to do with the service at 10:30 on a Sunday
morning. It's the supernatural of God
working through these giftings, through his people, the body of
Christ. And he tells us in James 5, if
any are sick among you, let them call upon the elders of the
church that they would come and be anointed with oil, which is
symbolic of the Holy Spirit, and that they would confess their
faults if they have a sin that they're not turning from.
So they come up and, and we have the elders and, and the persons
confidentially saying, you know, I'm, I'm in a unhealthy
relationship that isn't of God and I'm repenting of it.
And I, I want to, I want the Lord to forget.
You know, they're dealing with this according to James 5 and
the Bible says that the prayer of faith will save the sick and
that sometimes means physical healing, but it definitely
always means spiritual healings and reconciliation to the Lord.
And that's something that feel free to avail yourself to.
We, we don't have healing services here, but we are
willing as elders to do what the Bible says in regard to the fact
that if people are sick, we will do this.
But you have to want that, right?
You have to desire and you have to call upon the elders of the
church to do that. And sometimes that's like the
last stop. Maybe you've been to the doctor.
Maybe you've been with the medicine and you've, you've
tried all these things and, and nothing's working and, and you,
you, you want to give it a shot and see, well, maybe the Lord
will do something with this, this prayer of faith according
to James Far. But there's no guarantee that
you'll be healed physically, but there is a guarantee that you're
going to be forgiven of the sin. And sometimes the sin is what
manifests the illness and the disease.
Not every sickness is caused because of sin.
Through the fall. We're getting older and our
bodies start wearing out. I wish they didn't.
I wish someone had the ability to lay hands on me and make me
feel like I was 20 again. Right?
But that's not reality. The outward man perishes.
The Bible says the inward man's renewed day by day.
But these gifts of healing are still relevant and evident and
miraculous. By the same capital S Holy
Spirit to another. The working of miracles.
How I wish there was more miracles that I could see
occurring in the lives of desperate people, people in our
own church. I see them suffer.
I don't want to see you suffer, brother and your wife.
I wish I could touch you and all the sudden you're climbing
ladders again, you know? But I know their eyes are on
Jesus. Regardless of whether they get
healed now, they know they're going to definitely be healed
when they go into the presence of God one day.
But never stop praying for a miracle.
You can pray for a miracle, and you never know what the Lord
might choose to do. To another prophecy and this
idea of prophecy isn't so much being able to foretell the
future course. There are these times in our
lives that the Lord gives us insight into something and a
life of a brother or sister or husband some I was on vacation
and a pastor was with me and his wife and Cindy and, and as he
was praying, he said, the Lord has given me a vision right now
of your life. I'm thinking, OK, I hope it's a
good one. I like the good visions, not the
bad visions, but it was a good vision.
He said, I see you like a, a fish going into the ocean and he
knows I love the ocean swimming and you're going down way, way
deep. And it was sort of symbolic of,
of what he thought, you know, my, my life of wanting to go
deeper with God, which I do want to go deeper with God.
And it says all of a sudden you ran into the school of fishes
and they were all colorful and they were flying everywhere and
they were jumping up and down and swimming all around.
And that's probably a picture of the privilege I have to serve
you guys, your lives that are being impacted through the word
of God by Jesus Christ. Watch out for people that tell
you that Jesus is coming in October 10th of 2025.
There's so many books that have been written I'm so weary of how
do you want to hear it? I know he's coming back.
He said he's coming back. That's good enough for me.
I don't need to know the date or the time.
I just better make sure I'm ready when he's coming back.
That I'm doing what it is He's called me to do to another.
The discerning of spirits to be able to know because of your
grounding on the Word of God, what you're hearing is biblical
versus false teaching. And there's a ton of false
teaching out there today. And if you're not grounded in
the truth of the Word, you're going to be deceived.
You're going to be shifted, you're going to be moving by
every wind of doctrine. You're going to be unstable in
your walk with the Lord in your relationship with Jesus because
you don't have discernment. But discerning of spirits is to
be able to recognize that there's something that's not
right there. Maybe it's someone you meet and
they're telling you this and that and they're trying to give
you this great picture of how wonderful they are and, and
everything is perfect in their lives and they want to serve in
the church and they want to do this and they want to you know
you. That's why we have like a six
month waiting period for people. They want to get involved in
ministry. Make sure this is a church you
want to be in, but more importantly, make sure that we
know each other. The Bible says, I know those who
labor among you so you don't make a wrong choice, a wrong
decision. And in relationships, when
you're dating, you need to have discernment to know like, is
this person really brought into my life from the Lord or is this
like a real problem here? And most of the time when we
first meet someone we're infatuated with or we're
attracted to our bodies, what's driving us.
It isn't like listening to the Lord to give us a heads up like
this. This isn't a good thing.
So we need to ask the Lord for that discernment.
And I believe we all can be given discernment from the Lord
through being grounded in the Word.
But there are some people that really have the ability to 0 in
on evil, evil kind of spirits to another, different kind of
tongues to another, the interpretation of tongues.
This is a real controversial subject, more so today than it
was back in that day. The Bible wasn't codified yet in
the sense that it is now. So when they had meetings, it
would be someone who would speak by the Spirit of God and they
would have to discern whether whatever, what is what is it
that they were saying was tied into the teaching of the
apostles. And Corinth had all these
spiritual gifts going on and it was a mess spiritually.
People were angry with each other, they were bitter, they
were unforgiving, they were immoral.
They were like into drinking too much of the agape feast.
They were into pride and following certain people and
lifting others above other. And it was just a disaster.
And the whole book of First Corinthians is correction as to
the church getting back to what it needs to be and how it needs
to function. In First Corinthians 13, which
we'll move into the next several weeks, is all about what's most
important. And it isn't all these gifts I'm
talking about. The most important thing is a
manifestation of agape love toward one another, loving each
other unconditionally, caring for one another, loving the Lord
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
mind, and loving your neighbors, yourself and those two
commandments. The whole law is hinged
together. And I was talking to someone
recently had a meeting with them, younger brother who's
digging into the Lord and really fun to be around.
He said to me, we were talking about all this profound theology
stuff and doctrine stuff and all that.
And it's, it's fun to to have good conversations about that
kind of stuff with people who are interested in it.
But I said at the end of the day, though, like the most
important thing is love, right? All we need is love.
McCartney was on to something. But without Jesus, that Love's
going to not hold up. You know, you can love
supernaturally with the supernatural of love that God
gives us, not human love because it can wear out quickly.
But I said, why is it that, like, Christians so often have
this ability to really know truth or know the Word and all
that kind of stuff, and they can't love each other?
Doesn't make sense, does it? Because Jesus said let's lay all
that stuff aside for a moment. He said without love in First
Corinthians 13, we're nothing clanging, gong, noisy cymbal,
just a bunch of noise. And the thing that he said most
profoundly was to all of us, by this people will know you're my
disciples, not by these cards, but by the love you have for one
another. The early missionaries when they
would go into various countries in the Mideast, the pagans would
say to people when they asked them about these followers of
Jesus, they just say, oh, how these people love one another
because they don't see that in the world.
And unfortunately, so often in churches, church blitzes people
leaving because someone hurt them or offended them.
Or it's like love covers a multitude of sins, doesn't it?
I want to learn to grow in the love of God.
That's my heart's desire. I want to be able to love truly
love enemies, not this because it says I'm supposed to, but
because God's worked on my heart where now I can right and not
remembering wrongs and not easily offended all that Chapter
13, we get into it man. We could spend the rest of our
history and as Christians in that chapter, but the tongues
gift is temporal. It's fleeting.
It's the last gift mentioned in order as far as significance and
importance, but nonetheless, it is a gift.
Some people have it, some people don't.
Paul says later on that all people have all these gifts.
Nope, they don't. So if you have a prayer language
where you commune with God and it's supernatural and you've had
it your whole Christian life, allow the Lord to use that in
your life to build you up. We're not cessationist.
Calvary Chapel is not a church group that would teach it all
this. All the gifts are done.
They aren't. There's no nothing in the
Scripture that would indicate that they are done.
But they're used differently. And some churches you go in and
I've been in them where everybody's speaking in tongues
at the same time. It's like insanity.
What, what and what are these people doing here?
Is there any like even if there was an interpreter, how would
they interpret all this noise? And Paul gives real direction
later on, like when the gift was used, there had to be a public
manifestation, a gift. There had to be a public
interpretation that would tie into what it was that the Lord
was doing. But in all the years of my life
at the pastors conferences and they've been miraculous in the
word of God being taught so deeply and people worshipping
and we, we never had anybody break into tongues wasn't
important. But maybe people were praying in
the Spirit prior to those conferences so that the Lord
would really pour out His Spirit upon us as servants to be able
to come back into the ministry and the places we're from and
the towns and the cities and carry on in the work that God's
called us to do. So that's just the beginning of
this subject. And some of you are sleeping,
which is good. Something wrong with that.
So the worship team can come forward now and we'll call it a
day. All right, Enjoy the Steeler
game today, guys. See how Aaron Rodgers does
against his former team. That'll be interesting.
And then watch the US Open at 4:00 with the guy from Spain
playing. Playing Sinner.
What a name? Can you imagine a professional
tennis player? What's your name?
Last name, Sinner. I don't want a name like that,
but he's a really good, really good tennis player.
So let me say a prayer. We're going to take the Lord's
Supper. Oh Lord, we're so grateful for
your Holy Spirit, how you teach us, how you deepen us, how you
work in our hearts, refine us, cleanse us over and over and
over. You forgive us continually.
Lord, there's no one like you in the universe and the, and the,
and the whole creation that has this kind of capacity to love
and forgive over and over and over again, forgiving for the
same offense. Jesus said 70 * 7.
We're lucky if we can forgive someone once, let alone twice.
God work on us and make us like you, Jesus.
That's the purpose of your church, to conform us to your
image and likeness to make us more like you and we know you're
doing that and we thank you for it.
We yield to you today, Lord, we surrender.
If there's anyone here that doesn't know you, Lord, we pray
today that they would say, Lord Jesus, I want to know you.
I want you to forgive me of my sins and come into my life and
save me and change me. Only you can do that.
Lord. If there's prodigals here and
people who are drifting away from you, Lord, draw them back
because you're you got your arms held out and ready to receive
them again, to have that deep close relationship with you.
And Lord use us this week wherever we go, to be salt and
light, and be a blessing to others.
On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread in
his hands, and he broke, and he gave thanks.
And he said, Take, eat, this is my body which was given for you.
Eat this in remembrance of me. In the same manner, in that
evening he took the cup and he said, This cup is a new covenant
in my blood, which was shed for the forgiveness of sins of many.
Drink this in remembrance of me. For as often as we eat this
bread and we drink this cup, we show forth the Lord's death till
he comes again, Amen. And he's coming again, right?
Get ready. Love you guys, God bless.